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In:Exaptation and Language Change
Edited by Muriel Norde and Freek Van de Velde
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 336] 2016
► pp. 287–316

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The history of nominative -er in Danish and Swedish

A case of exaptation?

Published online: 24 February 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.336.10jen
A much cited example of exaptation is the development whereby the old case marker of the nominative in the masculine singular -er evolves into a derivative suffix changing adjectives into nouns in Swedish (Norde 2001, 2002, 2009; Heine 2003: 168; Narrog 2007). Recent studies based on Old and Middle Danish sources uncover how the developments of the old nominative took place (Jensen 2011); this paper presents an outline of these developments. The outline serves as the foundation for a discussion of whether the development of -er in Swedish and Danish should be taken as an example of exaptation, and if we really need the concept in historical linguistics at all, given that the developments depicted in this paper are easily and adequately covered by other well established concept of change, especially the notion of reanalysis.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Danish and Swedish
    • 1.2Periodization
    • 1.3The data
  • 2.The textually motivated development of the case form -er
  • 3.The textual function in the dialect of Old Scanian
    • 3.1.1Information associated with focus
    • 3.1.2First mention of new discourse referents
    • 3.1.3Newly-returned topics
    • 3.2Scribal errors or symptoms of a functionally motivated system?
  • 4.Additional evidence for a textually motivated function of nominative
  • 5.The expansion of the adjectival -er suffix
  • 6.Same but different
  • 7.Exaptation?
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources and references
References (74)
Sources and references
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